The Great Dictator

The Great Dictator is a comedy film released in October 1940. It was written, directed, produced by, and starred Charlie Chaplin. Having been the only Hollywood filmmaker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, Chaplin was taking a departure here: this was his first true talking picture as well as his most commercially successful film. More importantly, it was the first major feature film of its period to bitterly satirize Nazism and Adolf Hitler.

In the film Chaplin plays two characters who look strikingly similar: one a Jewish barber and the other a dictator who looks like Adolf Hitler. Near the end of the film, after a series of far-flung mishaps, the dictator gets replaced by his look-alike, the barber, and is taken to the capital where he is asked to give a speech addressing hundreds of thousands of people in attendance and millions listening over the radio.